They were the cast-off eccentricities of the fashions of six years ago,
and had drifted from the Rue de la Paix to this obscure Serbian shop
which was selling them as serious articles of clothing. Jo tried them
on, and one of the nurses became so weak with laughter that she tumbled
all the way downstairs.
Finding them quite impossible, Jo bequeathed them to the ward, where
they were snapped up enthusiastically.
The ugliest was an immense sailor hat, the crown nearly as wide as the
brim, but the head hole would have fitted a doll. However, John Willie
fancied that hat and was always to be seen, a tiny, round-backed figure,
wandering slowly in a long blue dressing-gown, blue woolly boots, and
the enormous hat perched on the top of his pathetically drooping head.
One day poor little John Willie became fearfully ill. His parents
arrived and sat dumbly gazing at him for two nights, while he panted his
poor little life away. His friend the Velika Dete (big child), once a
fierce comitaj, was moved away from the "Malo Dete," to make more room,
and he sulked, while the Austrian prisoner orderlies ran to and fro with
water for his head, milk, all the things that a poor little dying boy
might need; and old Number 13 passed to and fro shaking his head, for he
had been long in hospital and had seen many people die.
Pages:
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250